Integrating History of Computing into a Software Engineering Course Using a Retro Game Development Laboratory
Abstract: Understanding how to apply lessons learned from computing history is important for the development of young software engineers, however computing history, in computer science curricula, often goes no further than learning a few historical facts. In this paper, a retro game laboratory in a software engineering course is described. In this two-week laboratory, students learned how to program a constrained computing system and engaged in a retro game analysis and enhancement exercise. The results show that students gained an above average understanding of the limitations of constrained computing systems and poor programming practices. The creativity, critical thinking and problem solving skills developed during this laboratory will help these young software engineers as they build solutions for complex problems.